Frozen 2!! Music Theory!! Let's Do This!!

Frozen 2 came out last week, and the soundtrack is SOOOOOOOOOOO good!

I live-tweeted my reactions to *almost* the entire soundtrack earlier this week; I'll post it here when I've gotten through the whole thing, but meanwhile you can view the Twitter thread by clicking here.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Let's do an actual analysis of the opening song, shall we? ?

​(Disclaimer: I transcribed the notes by ear, so there may be some inaccuracies. I was a little unsure of the 3rd-4th measures in the second system, but everything else seems pretty clear.)

So, what really excited me the most when I first heard "All is Found" is its folksy, fantasy-esque sound.

But what makes it sound so folksy?

Here are some thoughts, just based on the opening verse:

• orchestration: breathy voice + guitar
• meter: syncopated dance rhythm in the bass
• mode: aeolian (with a whole step between 7 and 1)
• harmony: parallel root-position chords; open fifths; non-classical progressions
• production: tons of reverb = wide open landscape
  

What do you think? What'd I miss? What else do you like about this song, aside from its folksiness?

IF YOU HAVEN'T HEARD IT YET, you should! Here's the entire soundtrack on Spotify: